Sometimes just stopping and starting the (Print) Spooler service will help.

craigb

paulo
On a related note every time there is a win10 update on Mrs Paulo's  pc it seems to screw with the  printer somehow and it refuses to print saying that it is offline. The printing  troubleshooter says that it needs the printer to be on before it can self-diagnose but it is on - and I can use it on my win 8.1 system, so it's definitely an issue with her pc and the timing of when this happens  is too much of a coincidence. Switching the printer off and on again makes no difference and apparently it is not possible to turn off auto updates on win 10 Home Edition.  Eventually I can usually manage to get the it going again by rebooting the pc /printer / router in differing orders,  but is there some simple way to just reset  the printer status from offline to available - if there is I can't find it.
 
TIA
 
 

I've run into this annoyance a few times with clients.  I've given up on the magic bullet solution and usually just remove the printer and re-add it. 

That's what I ended up doing last time. I was hoping there would be something easier that I was missing. Oh well. Thanks for confirming that it's not just me anyway.

drewfx1
Sometimes just stopping and starting the (Print) Spooler service will help.

I seem to recall trying that but, at least in my case, it was like the computer knew "Printer XYZ" was out there but couldn't see it so it thought it was offline even though "Printer XYZ" was still connected and online.  Hence, the removal and readdition.
 
Here's a quick tip if you ever try to restart a service and it gets "stuck" with the state "Stopping..."
 
From a command prompt:
C:\> sc queryex [service]
(Try "sc queryex | more" if you want to see the PID's of all services.)
C:\> taskkill /f /pid [PID]
Now start the service manually.

drewfx1
Sometimes just stopping and starting the (Print) Spooler service will help.

I did do this once before and it worked, but I forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me.